A Print Catalog for ComicsMonkey

We’ve decided to launch a monthly print catalog of sorts at ComicsMonkey. Hopefully, this will serve to stir up a bit of excitement and again, hopefully, goose up your sales. This won’t be an all-inclusive catalog. It won’t be a phonebook-sized thing and it will not contain every listing at comicsmonkey.com, but instead will be a much slimmer, printed supplemental. Our intention is to put something spotlighting a handful of titles in the hands of retailers each month.

If you have a comic (or comics) at ComicsMonkey and you would like to be included in the catalog then here’s what you need to do —

If you send us your catalog page — in spec — by Monday January 31 then there is no fee for inclusion. For now at least your FULL PAGE FULL COLOR print catalog listing is FREE!

But you must get the page to us by the end of the month. We may (or may not — there are a lot of factors to consider) institute a nominal fee for inclusion in the future, but if you get us your listing by the date we’ve given and importantly in the exact format we’re requesting then it won’t cost you anything to get your page in one of our initial monthly catalogs. I should say also that depending on the volume of page listings we get back we may choose to spread the listings out over several months. We want to keep the monthly catalogs somewhat slim so as to accentuate the spotlight effect.

After you’ve downloaded the template open it in photoshop (or any program that can read, edit, and save a psd file) then follow the instructions below. You’ll need only ONE font for this and that’s Verdana (which is a system font that you’ve almost certainly got already installed).

1) Replace “Title #1″ with your title and issue number. Again, the font is Verdana and the font size is 18pt BOLD.

2) Replace “[00-1013]” with your item number (keep the brackets around it). You can find your item number underneath the title and issue number on your actual comicsmonkey.com listing. The font size is 18pt.

3) Replace “$3.99″ with your cover price as listed at ComicsMonkey (unless of course your price is $3.99 and then you need do nothing). The font size is 18pt BOLD.

4) Paste a 6 inch wide by 9 inch high 300 dpi version of your front cover INTO space occupied by the large red box. The red box is actually slightly smaller than 6 x 9 so be sure your cover image is pasted INSIDE the space occupied by the red box and does NOT extend beyond the edges of the box. We want to preserve the uniform white space between all of the graphics.

5-7) Paste a 2.3 inch wide by 3.45 inch high 300 dpi version of an interior page (your choice) INTO each of the three orange boxes. Again, the orange boxes are slightly smaller than 2.3 x 3.45 so be sure that the interior page images are pasted INTO the space and do NOT extend beyond the edges of the orange boxes. Remember, we want to preserve the uniform white space between all of the graphics.

8) Replace the text here with the text from your comicsmonkey.com listing. You may have to edit it down for space considerations. You don’t really need the full listing text anyway. You want just enough information to intrigue anyone reading it. Be sure to maintain the format — Credits first, then synopsis, overview, and lastly the copyright line. The font size is 9pt.

9) Replace the text here with the specifics of your item. For example, if your comic is manga-sized you would replace “Standard-Sized Comic” with “Manga-Sized Comic” or if your item is a trade paperback you would replace “Standard-Sized Comic” with “Standard-Sized TPB”, etc. Don’t forget to include the proper interior page count and whether or not your interior pages are “Full Color” or “Black & White”. The font size is 12pt.

Do NOT flatten the psd file. Repeat … please, do NOT flatten the file.

Here’s a sample page listing done PROPERLY —

The “All issues … available” graphic is something we will include if it applies to your listing.

As mentioned previously, we’re going to be sticklers about the formatting. We also reserve the right to edit your text for format’s sake, or for brevity, clarity, and typos or grammatical errors.

Also, our standard advertising content restrictions apply. Your book may not be All Ages Friendly, but our advertising IS. So no nudity, no overtly sexual content, or any words that would get a movie a rating stronger than “PG”. Violations of this will disqualify your listing, so please pay attention to that.

That should be all you need to know. When you’ve got your catalog page ready, then contact us in the Message Center with the download info.

19 Comments

Looks cool. I daresay in the future (when I have the $10 to spare on the bar code for ComicsMonkey), I will take part in this <3

Adam P.
on January 20, 2011 at 2:54 am

This is really cool of you guys. Looking over your template & these directions, I have a couple minor questions:

1. Should my graphics (the Cover & Interior Pages) be flattened against your supplied background layer? I’m not talking about flattening any of the text layers, just the graphics with the background. Or should we just be observing a “No flattening whatsoever” rule and leave the graphics on a separate layer?

2. Opening the template in Photoshop on my computer, the “Written & Illustrated by…” text layer is showing up at 8.64 font size, not 9. Does this matter? Should I change it to 9 before submitting my catalog page?

BarryGregory
on January 20, 2011 at 7:55 pm

Leave it all unflattened, please.

The quoted dimensions maintain the 2- to-3 ratio of the comics pages. The red and orange boxes are each a bit smaller (by design), so you should paste INTO the space.

This feels like a very stupid question, since the instructions are pretty explicit as to what we’re supposed to do. But I have to ask for peace of mind:

Maintaining the 2×3 ratio of the images as pasted into the boxes leaves red space above and below the cover and orange to the sides of the preview pages. Is that the way it’s supposed to be or are we supposed to fill the boxes side-to-side, top-to-bottom?

Great idea, and very exciting! I’m definitely planning to send something along!

BarryGregory
on January 21, 2011 at 6:57 pm

I’ve created a video here to try and clarify how the graphics should work. I think I misspoke in the video though and referred once to the red box as “orange”, but I think the meaning still comes through.

BarryGregory
on January 21, 2011 at 8:14 pm

I just caught that. Looks like photoshop is dropping the 9pt text to 8.64pt because that’s the closest it can get to 9pt when it rasterizes at our dimensions/resolution. So go ahead and do it at 9pt and if photoshop drops it to 8.64pt when it rasters then that’ll be fine. It’s a pretty nominal difference.

Tony
on January 22, 2011 at 1:52 am

Nice work folks! These are looking great!

TP
on January 31, 2011 at 6:46 pm

I posted here before (on a different article), and never got a response. Hopefully this time will be different?

But my question is regarding the statement “The ‘All issues … available’ graphic is something we will include if it applies to your listing.” If it is, in fact, applicable, do we have the option to place that notice on the ads ourselves? When it comes to graphics, I generally prefer my own stylization … if not, will we at least have different color options? (That orange would neither flatter nor be flattered by my typical artwork)

DMC
on February 7, 2011 at 6:05 am

We’ll be able to buy copies of this catalog right? Like Diamond’s “Previews” catalog?

When will we find out if our submissions for the catalogues are accepted?

BarryGregory
on February 18, 2011 at 4:49 pm

The idea is to go monthly if we get enough regular contributions. We have no plans to sell it, but we will be including copies of it with all IndyPlanet orders we ship out (since everything at CM is also at IP) though with modified branding to represent IndyPlanet and not ComicsMonkey.

BarryGregory
on February 18, 2011 at 4:54 pm

See my response to Courtney in this same thread.

BarryGregory
on February 18, 2011 at 5:03 pm

I can appreciate you wanting your own “stylization” but I’m going to say “no” I’m afraid, as I think a “yes” answer would open us up to an avalanche of “then why can’t I do this?” sort of requests.